As the Hous­ton area works to clean up and re­store pow­er to thou­sands af­ter dead­ly storms that left at least sev­en peo­ple dead, it will do so Sat­ur­day un­der a smog warn­ing and as all of south­ern Texas starts to feel the heat.

Har­ris Coun­ty Sher­iff Ed Gon­za­lez said three peo­ple died dur­ing the storm, in­clud­ing an 85-year-old woman whose home caught fire af­ter be­ing struck by light­ning and a 60-year-old man who had tried to use his ve­hi­cle to pow­er his oxy­gen tank.

Hous­ton May­or John Whit­mire pre­vi­ous­ly said at least four peo­ple were killed in the city when the storms swept through Har­ris Coun­ty, which in­cludes Hous­ton.

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice is­sued flood ad­vi­sories and watch­es for parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Al­aba­ma and Flori­da.

LACK OF ELEC­TRIC­I­TY RAIS­ES POS­SI­BIL­I­TY OF HEAT-RE­LAT­ED ILL­NESS

The Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice in Hous­ton warned that with tem­per­a­tures hit­ting around 90 de­grees (32.2 C) this week­end, peo­ple should know the symp­toms of heat ex­haus­tion. ”Don’t over­do your­self dur­ing the cleanup process,” it said in a post on the so­cial plat­form X.

The balmy weath­er is a con­cern in a re­gion where more than a half-mil­lion homes and busi­ness­es re­mained with­out elec­tric­i­ty Sat­ur­day morn­ing — down from near­ly 1 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to Power­Outage.us.

Fierce storms Thurs­day with winds of up to 100 mph (161 kph) blew out win­dows down­town, while a tor­na­do touched down near the the north­west Hous­ton sub­urb of Cy­press.

POW­ER COULD BE OUT FOR WEEKS IN SOME AR­EAS

Har­ris Coun­ty Judge Lina Hi­dal­go said Fri­day that it could take weeks for pow­er to be re­stored in some ar­eas.

With mul­ti­ple trans­mis­sion tow­ers down, Hi­dal­go urged pa­tience. An­oth­er 21,000 cus­tomers were with­out pow­er in Louisiana, where strong winds and a sus­pect­ed tor­na­do hit, down from a peak of 215,000.

The Hous­ton Health De­part­ment said it would dis­trib­ute 400 free portable air con­di­tion­ers to area se­niors, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and care­givers of dis­abled chil­dren.

WIDE­SPREAD DE­STRUC­TION BRINGS HOUS­TON TO A STAND­STILL

The wide­spread de­struc­tion brought much of Hous­ton to a stand­still. Trees, de­bris and shat­tered glass lit­tered the streets. One build­ing’s brick wall was ripped off.

School dis­tricts in the Hous­ton area can­celed class­es Fri­day for more than 400,000 stu­dents and gov­ern­ment of­fices were closed. City of­fi­cials urged peo­ple to avoid down­town and stay off roads, many of which were flood­ed or lined with downed pow­er lines and mal­func­tion­ing traf­fic lights.

May­or Whit­mire warned that po­lice were out in force, in­clud­ing state troop­ers sent to the area to pre­vent loot­ing. He said the speed and in­ten­si­ty of the storm caught many off guard.

“Most Hous­to­ni­ans didn’t have time to place them­selves out of harm’s way,” Whit­mire said at a news con­fer­ence.

Noelle Del­ga­do pulled up Thurs­day night to Hous­ton Pets Alive, the an­i­mal res­cue or­ga­ni­za­tion where she is ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor to find the dogs and cats — more than 30 in all — were un­in­jured, but the awning had been ripped off, the sign was man­gled and wa­ter was leak­ing in­side. She hoped to find fos­ter homes for the an­i­mals.

“I could def­i­nite­ly tell that this storm was a lit­tle dif­fer­ent,” she said. “It felt ter­ri­fy­ing.”

Yese­nia Guzmán wor­ried whether she would get paid with the pow­er still out at the restau­rant where she works in the Hous­ton sub­urb of Katy.

“We don’t re­al­ly know what’s go­ing to hap­pen,” she said.

DIS­AS­TER DE­C­LA­RA­TION PAVES THE WAY FOR AID

Whit­mire signed a dis­as­ter de­c­la­ra­tion, which paves the way for state and fed­er­al storm re­cov­ery as­sis­tance. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden al­so is­sued a dis­as­ter de­c­la­ra­tion for sev­en coun­ties in Texas, in­clud­ing Har­ris, over se­vere storms, straight-line winds, tor­na­does and flood­ing since April 26. His ac­tion makes fed­er­al fund­ing avail­able to peo­ple af­fect­ed by the storms.

Emer­gency of­fi­cials in neigh­bor­ing Mont­gomery Coun­ty de­scribed the dam­age to trans­mis­sion lines as “cat­a­stroph­ic.”

High-volt­age trans­mis­sion tow­ers that were torn apart and downed pow­er lines pose a twofold chal­lenge for the util­i­ty com­pa­ny be­cause the dam­age af­fect­ed trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, ac­cord­ing to Alexan­dria von Meier, a pow­er and en­er­gy ex­pert who called that a rare thing. Dam­age to just the dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem is more typ­i­cal, von Meier said.

How quick­ly re­pairs are made will de­pend on a va­ri­ety of fac­tors, in­clud­ing the time it takes to as­sess the dam­age, equip­ment re­place­ment, road­work ac­cess is­sues and work­force avail­abil­i­ty. Cen­ter­point En­er­gy de­ployed 1,000 em­ploy­ees on Fri­day and had re­quest­ed 5,000 more line work­ers and veg­e­ta­tion pro­fes­sion­als.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Ken Miller in Ok­la­homa City; Jamie Sten­gle in Dal­las; Va­lerie Gon­za­lez in McAllen, Texas; and Lisa Bau­mann in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton, con­tributed to this re­port.

BY  LEKAN OYEKAN­MI AND DAVID J. PHILLIP

HOUS­TON (AP)